Religion

02/25/2013

Most people think of it as a physical mark or object placed on/under the skin, but in reality, it is simply an entry in a database. That entry can be turned off, deleted, or modified in ways we don't fully understand yet.

Biocryptology is a mix of biometrics (using physical traits for identification) and cryptology (the study of encoding private information).

It is being beta tested at the School of Mines and Technolgy in South Dakota.

Here is how it works - mechanical engineering major Bernard Keeler handed a Red Bull to a cashier in the Miner's Shack campus shop, typed his birthdate into a pay pad and swiped his finger. Within seconds, the machine had identified his print and checked that blood was pulsing beneath it, allowing him to make the buy. Afterward, Keeler proudly showed off the receipt he was sent via email on his smartphone. This transaction is only possible if Keeler was placed into a database first.

01/09/2013

The Catholic Church's position on gun control is not easy to find; there are dozens of speeches and talks and a few documents that call for much tighter regulation of the global arms trade, but what about private gun ownership?

The answer is resoundingly clear: Firearms in the hands of civilians should be strictly limited and eventually completely eliminated.

The most direct statement comes in the bishops' "Responsibility, Rehabilitation and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice" from November 2000.

"As bishops, we support measures that control the sale and use of firearms and make them safer -- especially efforts that prevent their unsupervised use by children or anyone other than the owner -- and we reiterate our call for sensible regulation of handguns."

That's followed by a footnote that states: "However, we believe that in the long run and with few exceptions -- i.e. police officers, military use -- handguns should be eliminated from our society."

12/11/2011

Italy's Catholic Church has shifted gears and shown a willingness to revisit its tax-exempt status amid renewed criticism that much of its vast real estate holdings isn't subject to local property taxes.

The criticism has grown recently following Premier Mario Monti's proposal to restore a property tax on first and second homes as part of his sweeping austerity measures to help reign in Italy's massive debt.

With ordinary Italians being asked to make sacrifices, the church is coming under fire to do its part and give up what some consider an unfair privilege. Critics, most prominently Italy's Radical Party, charge that the Italian government is missing out on millions of euros in potential taxes.

10/26/2011

The Vatican called on Monday for sweeping reforms of the world economy and the creation of a ethical, global authority to regulate financial markets as demonstrations against corporate greed continued to spring up in major cities across the globe.

An 18-page document from the Vatican's Justice and Peace department said the financial downturn had revealed behaviours like "selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale," adding that world economics needed an "ethic of solidarity" among rich and poor nations.

The Vatican called for the establishment of "a supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction" to guide economic policies and decisions.

Such an authority should start with the United Nations as its reference point but later become independent and be endowed with the power to see to it that developed countries were not allowed to wield "excessive power over the weaker countries".

The world needed a "minimum shared body of rules to manage the global financial market" and "some form of global monetary management".

"In fact, one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of 'central world bank' that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks," it said.

08/25/2011

A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government. And it does so with unprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the bright line between foreign and domestic spying.

Neither the city council, which finances the department, nor the federal government, which contributes hundreds of millions of dollars each year, is told exactly what's going on.

They've monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing. NYPD officials have scrutinized imams and gathered intelligence on cab drivers and food cart vendors, jobs often done by Muslims.

A veteran CIA officer, while still on the agency's payroll, was the architect of the NYPD's intelligence programs. The CIA trained a police detective at the Farm, the agency's spy school in Virginia, then returned him to New York, where he put his new espionage skills to work inside the United States